


Figment

by screamingbabiesinmozartwigs (booooooooof)



Category: Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 12:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14694567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booooooooof/pseuds/screamingbabiesinmozartwigs
Summary: It was almost like Stefon was an end to a means.





	Figment

He’d almost said it. He’d almost said it on TV in front of Bill, the staff, the crew, and their entire audience. He’d managed to turn it around and make it into a joke faster than you could blink. He’d put enough honesty into it that it rang sweet and true but basically was something they could laugh off. That’s where they excelled, after all. And it was true. He _did_ know Stefon was a fictional character. But that didn’t stop him from having _real_ feelings and those feelings didn’t end and die whenever Bill went back to being Bill. And that was the truth.  
  
And it wasn’t Seth’s fault anyway, it was Bill’s. Because Bill had gone and done a character that was so convincing and endearing that Seth had fallen in love back. It didn’t help that sometimes when it was just the two of them, Bill slipped into Stefon as easily as he did with any other character he’d mastered. Sometimes it was just a line or a look, but it always made Seth blush and laugh and _want_. But there was just no earthly way he could ever say it out loud. That a piece of his heart had got stuck and was still nestled with a figment of Bill and Mulaney’s collective imagination.  
  
Sometimes he felt fine. Sometimes he felt foolish but like he’d simply let a joke run on too long. Sometimes he actually convinced himself that it was just a weird little thing that happened in the past. That he’d went and developed a crush on a co-worker because that co-worker pretended to be in love with him. That was something they could laugh at, if only it had _ended_ in the past. But instead, just the other day, Bill had resurrected Seth’s _husband_ and Seth had managed to instead reveal the slightly less embarrassing truth that he gets jealous when Bill performs Stefon with someone else.  
  
  
Later that weekend they’re alone after slipping away from a house party. They both could have pretended to need a short break from the loudness, but Bill was always too perceptive for his own good, “What’s up?”  
  
And Seth was always too honest for his. Seth felt the blush already, “This is really stupid,” he said but kept smiling, ready to turn it into a joke if need be, “Can I talk to my husband?”  
  
He said it with a hopeful tone and prayed it didn’t come out sounding desperate. But he _felt_ desperate. He felt like this was something he actually _needed_.  
  
Seth saw the way Bill’s eyes widened just a bit before seamlessly and effortlessly becoming Stefon in an instant, “Did you get milk on the way home? I used the last of it to make a swimming pool for Lillian Paddingson.”  
  
Seth felt a lump in his throat, he was so ridiculously happy, “Who is Lillian Paddingson?”  
  
Bill rolled his eyes, “We’ve _talked_ about this. She’s the frog who lives in our bathroom.”  
  
Seth felt his cheeks start to hurt from his wide smile, “Right. Of course. Lillian. Why does she swim in milk again?”  
  
“She’s an Olympian hopeful, she needs the calcium.”  
  
Seth started laughing and he couldn’t decide if it was because Stefon’s type of bizarre always made him laugh or if he was just completely giddy. Or maybe he finally had become completely unhinged.  
  
“Remember? She wears the little frog swimming cap?” Bill mimed putting on the cap and it only made Seth laugh harder.  
  
He caught his breath for a moment to say, “Oh yeah. That’s how we tell her apart from the _non_ -Olympian frogs we house.”  
  
“Exactly.” Now Bill was laughing too.  
  
Seth’s heart felt heavy and light at the same time.  
  
Bill was giving him the look. The Stefon look that made Seth hot and bothered and confused. Very confused, because this was just a bit. There isn’t real feelings here. Or there isn’t supposed to be. It’s confusing because Seth could never figure out if Bill was just an amazing actor or if that look in Bill’s eyes was something like reciprocation.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” Bill said and Seth, for the life of him, couldn’t tell if it was Bill or Stefon talking.  
  
But that didn’t ultimately matter, he decided, because his reply was the same either way, “I’ve missed you too.”  
  
“Seth?” someone called from the other room, “Come and see this!”  
  
Seth swallowed, ready to face reality again. But then Bill leaned forward and Seth held very still. Bill pressed a kiss to his cheek and Seth did his level best to react normally. He grinned at Bill hoping it was a friendly one and not weird and clingy like he felt it was. He wondered if the desperate desire to stay in that moment was shining through in his eyes. But he was determined to keep this thing to himself, to leave Bill unaffected and sane.  
  
Seth turned to the door. He had his hand on the doorknob when Bill’s voice behind him said, “You know,” and Seth stopped to look back at him. Bill’s face was just a little red and he was watching Seth with careful eyes, “You can talk to me, him, whenever you want.”  
  
The burst of fondness that tingled all throughout Seth’s body was powerful and bright, “Thanks,” he said softly and let the look between them speak for itself before finally turning back to the door.  
  
  
The encounter stayed with Seth even after Bill went back to California. He tried not to place too much meaning into it, there’d been drinking and even though it’d only been a couple of glasses of wine, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that they might have been just a little drunk. But there was a tightness in his chest and a sort of loneliness that became too much one night just a couple weeks later.  
  
He dialled before he could give himself a chance to back down. He glanced at the clock, it was two in the morning. New York was three hours ahead of California, he hoped Bill wasn’t sleeping already.  
  
“Hey,” Bill answered the phone after only two rings. Seth felt better knowing he was awake.  
  
“Hey,” Seth grinned into the receiver, “Have time to talk?”  
  
He heard Bill move around, maybe leaving the room. There was the soft click of a door closing. “Sure, what’s going on?”  
  
Seth suddenly felt like a jerk, dragging Bill away from whatever he was doing, “Oh, ah… well…” it was much more awkward than he thought it was going to be when he decided to call in the first place. Bill probably thought this was work related or that Seth actually needed to talk to him about something.  
  
But, luckily, as always, Bill caught on almost immediately and barely missed a beat, “Seth Meyers,” he said, his voice suddenly soft and husky, “Come to this club, I swear to God, it has everything.”  
  
Seth was smiling so wide it almost hurt, “You always say that.”  
  
“This time I mean it! There’s penguins, alkaseltzer cocktails, and Panda Poehlers!”  
  
“Pandas that look like Amy Poehler?”  
  
Seth could hear the smile in Bill’s voice, “Hey, you’re getting good at this!”  
  
“What time are you coming home?” he felt that desperation again. It was a worrying and acute sensation. And he _needed_ this weird illusion of domesticity.  
  
“Hmmmm,” Bill, Stefon, Bill breathed into the phone, “I want to see the giraffe wrestling match, so two hours? Three? Unless Gordan Ramsey is driving again, then… ten.”  
  
“What is a giraffe wrestling match?” Seth put his head against the cool window of his bedroom. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the voice at the other end of the phone. It was a voice that didn’t belong to a real person and yet...  
  
“You know, it’s that thing, where two tall guys dress in yellow and wrestle each other in whipped cream?”  
  
Seth chuckled into the receiver, “Oh, _that_ thing.”  
  
“So don’t wait up. Go to sleep, Seth Meyers.”  
  
Seth sighed, “Okay, good night.”  
  
Seth was about to hang up when he heard, “Seth?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Seth’s heart stuttered in his chest, he swallowed heavily before answering, “I love you too.”  
  
  
It wasn’t fair. People who were delusional didn’t _know_ they were. Seth _knew_ that this was an unhealthy and unsustainable obsession. So Seth didn’t call again even though he thought about it several times a week. He kept busy and was sure that Bill was busy too. But mostly he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. That last conversation had felt important and somewhat heavy and it scared him. It had sort of dragged him even further into this illusion and he was scared about what was going to happen when that illusion finally burst.  
  
He also couldn’t tell where his feelings began and ended. Were his feelings for Stefon the same as his feelings for Bill? He couldn’t tell. They both made him laugh, they both made his heart ache, they both made him feel like he was the luckiest guy in the world to get to work with them sometimes. Maybe, he wasn’t so much as losing reality as he was swimming in denial. But even that seemed a bit much to take, especially since he was sure that Bill was only humouring him.  
  
His heart raced when his phone vibrated one night at 1 in the morning and he saw it was Bill. With slightly shaking hands, he accepted the call.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“So, I feel like there’s always parts of myself that I leave behind when I stop playing a character,” Bill was apparently mid-ramble, “But in another sense, I never _stop_ playing a character. They’re all a part of me. They’re all… me. It’s like I have a hundred personalities and they all come out in weird ways.”  
  
Seth wasn’t sure what Bill was trying to say. Was he telling him that Stefon didn’t exist or that he did? Seth thought of himself as a decent actor but he couldn’t hold a candle to Bill. Maybe Bill was talking about something that only seriously talented actors could understand.  
  
“So… so it’s confusing and weird,” Bill continued, Seth didn’t know if he was going to be able to get a word in, “And what makes it worse is the _feelings_ are all still there. Like even when the bit is over, it’s not _really_ over. The camera’s off, but like _I’m_ still there.”  
  
“Um… okay?”  
  
Bill seemed to have caught the bewilderment in Seth’s voice, so he gave a frustrated sigh, “This is coming out all wrong. What I’m trying to say is that the way Stefon feels about you, is there. But also I _am_ Stefon. He’s a fictional character, yes, of course, only he’s also a lot of me. And I think I’m supposed to move on when I’m done with a character, but I’m also not sure if I completely can. And… and I don’t want to be only recognized as that one role so that’s confusing too, because I _want_ to move on and do other things but then sometimes I can’t stand the thought of that either. And you said you knew that Stefon was a fictional character and I know that too. So, we both know that.”  
  
Seth wasn’t sure if that cleared things up at all, he was confused as to what was actually going on here. “So…” Seth figured he needed to start helping him out, “Is this about what I said in the interview?” because that was the only time in recent history he could remember talking to Bill about ‘fictional characters’.  
  
“Uh…” Seth could practically see the adorable tilt of his head, “Yes?” He seemed to take a breath before going into another rant, “It like sort of hurt my feelings. Isn’t that the stupidest thing? Sometimes I feel like he’s more real than _I_ am. Like I just walk around trying to be someone I’m not all the time anyway. At least he _knows_ who he is. And a lot of who he is, is _me_. And I didn’t mean for it to happen that way, it just sort of did. And then sometimes I think I see something and I get my hopes up, but then I have to think about what _other_ people are seeing and what if it isn’t _me_ they like but just the thing I’m doing-”  
  
Seth couldn’t help the laughter that came ripping out from inside of him. This whole thing was so weird and deserved it’s own sitcom. He was also so deeply relieved that the laughter was probably a side effect. But Bill wasn’t laughing with him, so he tried to calm down, tried to catch his breath, “Okay, okay, okay,” he took in a deep breath, “I get it.”  
  
Bill’s voice sounded skeptical, “Do you?”  
  
Seth smiled, “You know, I actually feel a lot better knowing I’m not in love with a complete figment of imagination.”  
  
Seth heard Bill choke. Maybe on air or on his own tongue. “You-” Bill stuttered, “You’re…” Then Bill broke into loud laughter that sounded like the same relief, then he quickly tried to smother it since there were probably people trying to sleep, “Oh my god. I thought I was imagining things. I thought I was going crazy. Then I thought I was going to ruin everything with this phone call.”  
  
“Hey, at least you _had_ two separate characters to play. I was just _me_ the entire time. How’s that for confusing?”  
  
Bill was snickering, “I’m sorry.”  
  
They were quiet for a moment, each smiling into their phones.  
  
“We’re okay, right?” Seth asked, “This is fine?”  
  
Bill swallowed, “Yeah… I think so.”  
  
“And just so we’re on the same page,” Seth said with a smile in his voice, “This _was_ you telling me you’re in love with me too, right?”  
  
Bill sighed into the phone, “Yeah.”  
  
“Good,” Seth was close to laughing again.  
  
“But who do you love more? _Me_ or Stefon?”  
  
“I thought we just concluded you’re you whether you’re Stefon or not.”  
  
He heard Bill smile, “Just checking.”  
  
It occurred to Seth that Bill had apparently gone through his own mini-crisis, adjacent to Seth’s own. Seth had always thought he was subtle about his crush, but apparently he’d been as subtle as a fire truck. And if Bill noticed, he had had to wonder _who_ Seth was crushing on. Seth felt slightly guilty about it, but it felt good to know his initial confusion had good company.  
  
This was a conversation that would have made zero sense to anyone else. It sounded like two grown men had just had a mental breakdown and were talking nonsense. But it made perfect sense to them and Seth was so grateful that Bill had always been braver than him. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to initiate the conversation that just happened, even if he thought the outcome might be as good as this.  
  
“I think we’re insane,” Bill said softly and Seth could tell he was still smiling.  
  
Seth’s heart felt full. The confusion was finally alleviated. “What?” Seth teased him, “Because we fell in love during a shared delusion?”  
  
Bill’s laughter would always be one of Seth’s favourite sounds, “Well, when you put it that way.”


End file.
